Taken by Fire Read online

If the entire thing weren’t so goddamned serious, he would’ve been laughing at the absurdity of it all. Laughing, because he now understood the expression If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.

  He shoved Oz’s prediction to the back of his mind as he simultaneously shoved his cock back into his pants, where it should’ve stayed.

  Oz, former ACRO employee. Seer of the dead. Predictor of future events, no matter how ridiculous they seemed at the time.

  “Me with a virgin? Dude, not since middle school, and even then …” Stryker downed the rest of his JD on the rocks and stared at the dark-eyed man sitting across from him at the small table.

  “I call them as I see them. You’re going to marry a virgin.”

  “Well, that takes care of that, since I have no plans to marry.” There were far too many willing women and his attention span was nil. No reason to make false promises like loving one woman and only one woman for the rest of his life.

  Nope, not his bag.

  He peered out the window, praying that he didn’t see any major destruction. When he got into the sex haze, he wasn’t ever sure that his powers were under control.

  So far, everything looked fine outside. But he was far from fine, and from the look in Mel’s eyes as she emerged from the bathroom, so was she.

  “Did I hurt you?” he demanded, his words coming out harsher than he intended.

  She shook her head, her cheeks colored, and he nodded like an idiot because what the hell else was he supposed to do?

  She was supposed to be Phoebe. He was supposed to be able to kill her.

  This whole ACRO agent, good-guy-versus-bad-guy used to be much easier.

  “Let’s go.”

  “We have to stop at my apartment before we do anything else—the shot, remember?”

  “I remember. It’s the only thing stopping me from killing you right now,” he growled, and was surprised when she didn’t flinch at his words.

  “Trust me, I want to kill her myself,” she told him. “Let’s go.”

  Well, Mel was growing a pair right before his eyes. Interesting.

  They left the hotel, and he kept her close as they walked down an alley toward a more open area—there would be less cover that way, but also less chance of the excedos attacking in public.

  Of course, they had to get there first.

  “Did you do that?” she asked as she looked up at the side of the building, which looked as if it had simply slid off.

  He didn’t answer her, just stepped over the large crevice where the road had split in two—no doubt also his handiwork—and hustled her along. There was no time to waste here. If she wanted to stay alive, she had to remain Melanie, because if Phoebe came out … he wasn’t sure he could be responsible for what happened, no matter what he’d promised Devlin.

  They made it to a bustling shopping district, and Mel slowed every time they passed a restaurant or food stand. He’d grab her hand, drag her away, and she’d be fine until the next one. Finally, at the window of a pastry shop, she refused to budge.

  “I need food.”

  He stared. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I guess sex makes me hungry. Do you have any money?”

  Un-fucking-believable. And yet, he found himself buying her a damned chocolate croissant, which she happily munched as they threaded their way through the crowds. She looked around as they walked, often became distracted by the shops to the point that he’d have to nudge her and steer her in the right direction.

  “Haven’t you ever seen a store before?”

  She trailed her finger along the glass front of a shoe shop, her gaze wistful. “I don’t get out on my own much. Everything is done online and delivered. Even groceries.”

  “And clothes?”

  “Phoebe buys those, since I don’t usually go anywhere.” She gestured down a side street. “This way.”

  “If you don’t go anywhere, how do you know where you’re going?”

  “Alek made sure I’m familiar with all the cities where we have a residence, just in case anything bad happens.”

  He drew to a stop as four men approached from around a corner and two others closed in from the rear. “Like now.”

  “I hate these guys,” Melanie muttered.

  “Your powers—fully charged?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the approaching men.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’d rather not start another earthquake if I don’t have to.”

  “Let me take care of them this time,” Mel said, and although he didn’t like letting a woman take the lead in a potentially deadly situation, she did have the necessary skills to stop this from turning into a full-blown battle.

  The men would never know what hit them.

  “Back against the building. We want them in a group.”

  “Okay.” The confidence in her voice was belied by the shaking of her hands, but she did as he ordered, and in one synchronized movement, they put their backs to the wall and allowed the men to close in.

  These guys knew what they were doing, and at the far ends of the street, they had cut off pedestrian and car traffic, which meant they were coordinating with more people—they might even have law enforcement on the take.

  “It’s payback time.” One of the men, who Stryker fondly remembered as Dumpster Guy, gestured to his broken nose and fat lip. He was also walking with a limp, and Stryker couldn’t contain a smile.

  “I fucked you up pretty good—” Stryker broke off as an icy chill shot past him, blanketing the men in a freezing coffin of ice. Their faces froze in stark terror, bodies caught forever in motion …

  Half a dozen men, who, in front of his eyes, began to crack apart, literally, into pieces. Body parts smashed to the sidewalk, still encased in their prison, and holy fuck, he didn’t want to think about what this woman could’ve done to him, had she been given the chance.

  You gave her the chance, asshole. She could’ve turned on him at any point. But she hadn’t.

  Probably saving it up. There was no way he could trust her. But he’d sure as hell use her until he could get her to ACRO.

  “Stryker, let’s go.” At the urgency in her voice and the tug of her hand on his arm, they were moving at top speed down the alley. Two men loitered near an intersection, looking a little too interested, and when they began to follow, he whisked her into a recessed, shadowed doorway to what looked like an abandoned apartment building.

  He kept his voice low. “How fast can you bring your powers to bear if we need to engage these guys?”

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I … well, I sort of drained my powers again.”

  “You drained your powers? What the hell kind of move is that?”

  “You’re angry at me because I saved your life?”

  “I didn’t ask you to go all Rambo ice on me.” He heard the indignance in his voice and wondered if this wasn’t the most ridiculous conversation ever. “Don’t you know how to control the amount of force you use? Like, instead of full blast, how about half blast or something.”

  “I don’t know how to do anything but let it all out,” she said. “I can either do a big, widespread cold the way I did this morning, or I can fire a concentrated burst that comes out in a stream of supercold, like liquid nitrogen.”

  “You’re going to tell me your power only has two speeds?”

  “I don’t get the chance to practice much because …”

  “Phoebe. Right.” His jaw clenched so hard he was sure he heard a pop. This Mel was up to something—no one with powers used them up like that … there was no way Phoebe would allow her to be so … vulnerable, was there? If they shared a body, Phoebe would want to make sure Mel protected herself.

  You have no real way of knowing if Phoebe controls both sides … if this is all a goddamned act.

  He couldn’t stand here and try to figure all this out. She could totally be lying and he had no way to disprove anything. He tensed, ready to crack some heads as the men eased into view, but they turned
down another street, giving Stryker and Mel an opportunity to run.

  Which they did, all the way to her apartment. He did a quick walk-through to clear the place—looked like no one had been in here since they left, but he paced uneasily as she ducked into the bathroom and emerged with three filled syringes.

  Uncapping one, she sank down on the bed. “I’ve never done this before.”

  Like a besotted dope, he nearly offered to do it for her, but thankfully his agent instincts kicked in—finally—and he stepped back, watched her carefully, waiting to see if she gave anything away.

  She gave away nothing, not even a flinch as she sank the needle into her biceps and jammed down the plunger. And then the urgent slam of a fist against the front door made her jump in a way that seemed far too real for even the most seasoned actress.

  “It’s got to be Itor,” she whispered urgently. “It’s too late for the mail. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “How? Unless you can fly, we’re stuck fighting.” He stared hard at her.

  “They’re going to kill you—you need to hide.”

  “Oh, sure, that’s going to happen. I’ll just let you walk back into Itor’s hands. Not a problem.”

  “I’m trying to save you, Stryker. I’ll get rid of them for you. I’ll pretend to be Phoebe.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t trust a damned thing you say.” He took her arm. “We deal with this together.”

  He mentally calculated how quickly he could have sex with her, wondered if her power sparked instantaneously after an orgasm, like she could point and shoot right as he …

  Ah, forget it. He drew his pistol, shoving Mel behind him in a gesture that struck him as oddly protective. Cursing himself as the biggest idiot on the planet, he eased toward the entrance just as the pounding stopped … only to be replaced by a hissing noise.

  “What’s that?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know.” A chemical odor filled the air, and he whipped his head up to a vent in the ceiling. “Shit! The window!”

  “I don’t understand—”

  He grabbed her hand, sprinted toward the window, and stumbled. He heard a thump behind him, turned, his vision going fuzzy, to see Mel, unconscious, on the floor.

  His last thought as he joined her was that, seriously, only pussies used gas …

  Annika Svenson was now eight and a half months pregnant and kept saying that Oz’s predictions didn’t always pan out, that she was fine, that they’d been through so much shit together that the bad things between them had no doubt already happened.

  As much as he wanted Ani’s bravado and assurances about her pregnancy to wipe away his worries, Creed McCabe wasn’t having it. He was pretty sure Ani knew she hadn’t convinced him fully, but he wanted to keep her calm and so he pretended he didn’t hear the death watch beetle ticking in his ear all the goddamned time. It was driving him crazy, and he was superstitious enough to tie the omen to Oz’s prediction.

  The thing was, Ani couldn’t hear the tapping—when she woke in the middle of the night and found him staring at the ceiling, he’d tell her that the noise was driving him nuts. She told him he was hearing things.

  Death watch beetles also tapped and ticked while looking for a mate, he reminded himself. He remembered his own long wait for Annika to decide to give him a chance, and for a moment he sympathized with the damned bug.

  She didn’t strut as well anymore—she had for the first eight months and now it was more of a strut-slash-waddle. And she looked damned cute doing so, and fuck, this should be the most joyous time in his life and instead he was walking around like Lurch with a hangover.

  Even his own mother told him to lighten the hell up, dear. Only Kat, the spirit who had been bound to him almost since birth through the tribal tats that went from head to toe on his right side, seemed to understand. Hell, she shared his anxiety. She’d fought the relationship with Annika for so long, but both females—one ghost, one warm, breathing woman—had learned to respect each other, to even like each other. Kat didn’t want to lose Annika either, and they both needed to keep their minds off even the remotest of possibilities.

  And so he worked with ACRO’s ghost hunters and took on jobs that wouldn’t take him far away from Ani, went with her on every appointment, and enjoyed the fuck out of her hormones, which kept him really busy for many, many hours of the day and night.

  She was excited and restless, and somewhere, deep down inside, he knew she was worried as well.

  And the whole time, he kept the ring in his pocket as if it could possibly ward off all evil, twisted it like a worry stone, and stared at Ani’s finger a lot when she was sleeping.

  “We don’t need a piece of paper,” she’d argued, and no, maybe they didn’t, but he wanted it, wanted something between them to be goddamned fucking easy for once.

  “You are seriously distracted.”

  Gabe stood over him, panting, and Creed realized the kid had laid him out flat.

  “Fuck off,” he growled.

  “And now you sound like Ender.” Gabe shook his head. “I need training, dammit.”

  Ever since he’d gotten back from that ill-fated trip in the Amazon where Akbar had died, Gabe had tripled his efforts in an almost superhuman way. Part guilt out of hurting Annika, part desire to prove himself to Devlin and the rest of ACRO, and if Gabe kept this up, he’d either burn out or save them all.

  “Dude, you have got to chill every once in a while. More to life than training.”

  Gabe muttered something under his breath, and yeah, he was in the middle of relationship issues too. Devlin had always been obsessed with Itor’s takedown, but it had morphed into something greater than all of them, a supersecret plan Dev wouldn’t share with anyone.

  God, they were all fucking pathetic when it came to intrapersonal shit, but put the fate of the free world in their hands and they managed just fine. “Come on,” he told Gabe after he peeled himself off the floor. “You and I need a drink.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Trust me, you need several. You’ll settle for one.”

  Melanie’s head hurt. Her eyes burned. And the floor was really, really hard.

  Floor? Groggily, she sat up, blinking in the dim light. There was metal all around her … a crate. She was in a metal cargo crate about six feet wide and ten feet long, and just high enough to allow Stryker to stand.

  Which he was doing as he peeked through the air holes lining the side walls. Light streamed through them and the barred door, illuminating the dark space.

  “What happened?”

  Stryker turned to her. “We were gassed.” He sank down to sit with his back against the wall. “I haven’t seen anyone yet, but we seem to be inside a big warehouse.”

  Her stomach churned. “We need to get out of here.”

  “You think?”

  Ass. “Can you use your earthquake thing?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll give away my hand if whoever has us doesn’t know what I am, and even if I was willing to risk that, I’d bring the warehouse down on our heads. We need to wait until someone shows up.” He shot her a piercing look. “Or you could freeze the metal lock to make it brittle, and we can break out.”

  She drew a sharp breath. Even if she could control it that well … she flexed her hand, testing her power, and though she felt a cool tingle, it wasn’t enough to do something like freeze metal. She could maybe make some ice cubes for a drink, but that would be about it. “I’m … ah …”

  “I know. We’ll have to fuck.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  She glared at him. “You could at least pretend that having sex with me isn’t the end of the world.”

  “Because you’re acting so excited,” he shot back, and she couldn’t deny it.

  Sighing, she rubbed her eyes. This was such a nightmare. The pounding in her head grew stronger, more like knocking.

  Phoebe.

  “How long were we out?”

&nb
sp; Stryker shrugged. “About six hours. Why? Is your shot wearing off?”

  “Yes.” She was also hungry. Cursing softly, she patted her pockets, where she stuffed the two remaining shots. “They’re gone.”

  “Over there.” He cocked his thumb at a table on the other side of a thick, clear shield she’d bet was fireproof. Her syringes and his weapons were piled on the table.

  “Damn—” Crying out from pain, she grabbed her head.

  Stryker moved to her, put his hands over hers. “Hey.” His voice was surprisingly gentle. “What’s wrong?”

  “She wants out,” Mel gasped.

  “Does it normally hurt?”

  “Only when I fight it.” All around her, the light faded, until she was in a tunnel of darkness. Distantly, she heard Stryker calling her name.

  Then she heard nothing.

  Phoebe took in the situation in one second flat. She was in a crate, held prisoner, with the ACRO agent known as Stryker.

  Fucking great.

  How in the hell had Mel gotten them into this? Whatever. She needed to get them out of it. Smiling, she tweaked Stryker’s nose. “Hello, sexy. Did you miss me?”

  Stryker swatted her hand away and scooted as far as he could get from her. “Shut the fuck up and send Mel back.”

  “I don’t think so.” She propped herself against the side of the crate and studied him. He looked the same as he had in the jungle—maybe more tan. And his eyes … those funky eyes. They were harder, as if life had bent him over and railed him for months. “Tell me, did you bury your friend … or scatter his ashes?”

  “Shut. Up.”

  As if. God, she hated ACRO agents. Too many of her colleagues had died at their holier-than-thou hands, and she’d always been convinced that the earthquake that killed her mother had been caused by ACRO. Maybe not, but it was pretty damned coincidental that two Itor bodyguards assigned to keep watch over Phoebe, Mel, and their mother had died too, and yet civilians had been merely injured.

  Continuing with the taunt, she ran her hand over the inside of her thighs to her crotch. “I think about him, you know? When I’m getting myself off. I think about how he screamed—”

  Lightning fast, Stryker was on her, his forearm across her throat, his knee in her gut. She didn’t react other than to smile as he bared his teeth. “You evil fucking bitch … I want your sister back, or I swear, I’ll kill you right here, right now.”